A question from a purely mathematical point of view: what would be the right level of encounters for – say – a 20th level fighter with no magic items? I read a thread recently about a PC being surprised while bathing and how long he would last.
Let’s say he (and his party) has standard non-magical weapons, maybe standard non-magical armour, decent stats but not maxed out, broad feats rather than total mastery of one weapon. Is he the equivalent of a tooled-up, optimised 15th level character? A 10th level one? How much does the items, feat selection and the like affect the challenge rating?
Probably about 12th, or 8th when compared to a high optimization level.
blashimov wrote: Probably about 12th, or 8th when compared to a high optimization level. Yeah, I would agree with this. A total generalist, with off-combat feats, and absolutely no magic gear or long term spells up; would find a challenge in an 8th level tricked out, highly optimized specialist.
The 20th level guy would probably still win though, just because of hit points.
12 BAB, and 3 weapon training. Maybe +1 AC from DEX.
Vs 3 from STR (optimized) 3 from STR (item) 3 from magic weapon, 2 from WF/GWF, 2 from dueling gloves. And VS AC +3 from magic armor.
So the 8th level guy is actually 5% more likely to land his attack.
EDIT: Ooh, I forgot, if the 20th level guy has a masterwork weapon then they are even to hit. The 8th level guy is doing more damage per hit, but 20th level guy has the extra iteratives.
Does the same apply for monsters?
If you were running a 20th level party through an AP, say, we'd be okay up to about 8th level and then have to adjust the difficulty downwards?
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it depends on what they are fighting. DR 10/magic will reduce make their attacks almost completely ineffectual. Being unable to keep up with fast healing or stop regeneration means that even something like a troll is going to be a hard creature to put down.
CR15 scorpion, they can handle it
CR10 Demon, not a chance.
You would probably be ok up until about 6th level, with problems arising after that, and then basically not being able to continue around 10th-12th level.
Monsters are actually worse then humanoid npcs. They wouldnt run into the same problems due to reduced gear. It wouldnt be a matter of adjusting diffulty down, you would have to evaluate each individual monster. Things like special abilities, to hit bonuses, AC and saves would all have to be examined against what the pcs can do.
Often very debilitating monster abilities have relatively low saving throw dcs (for their level) to balance out the harsh effects. But if the players are significantly behind the curve numbers wise, that threat becomes vastly disproportionate.
Not to mention, if the front liner's AC stops going up, and some higher level enemies hit with every attack, it wont matter the front liner's HP, he will just be tropped.
Take for instance, a cloud giant. A CR 11 opponent, If say an 11th level party was facing 2 of them. A dedicated front liner's AC would be somewhere in the high 20's or low 30's. That means that its very unlikely either cloud giant would hit with all 3 attacks. Thats good because he would be doing an average of 96 damage with 3 hits, enought to drop all but the absolute toughest pcs at that level. But without magic items, AC basically stops progressing for pcs. Which means the chance of the pc getting flattened in a single round by the cloud giant is much, much higher. And there are 2 of them. Which means you literally could have 2 dead pcs in one turn, and not even with unlucky rolls, but rolling close to average. And that problem only gets worse as you progress to higher levels.
Fair comment, but a cloud giant is what, 20 foot tall and 5000lbs? I think even Conan might think twice about attacking one, let alone two.
Of course, that assumes the PC sees it as 20 feet tall and 5000lbs and not a level-appropriate set of stats to fight, but that was kind of what I was hoping to aim at - that someone might think to sneak around, bargain with or trick something like that.
But yes, point taken at having to look at the numbers for saves and things.
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MAJT69 wrote:
A question from a purely mathematical point of view: what would be the right level of encounters for – say – a 20th level fighter with no magic items? I read a thread recently about a PC being surprised while bathing and how long he would last.
Let’s say he (and his party) has standard non-magical weapons, maybe standard non-magical armour, decent stats but not maxed out, broad feats rather than total mastery of one weapon. Is he the equivalent of a tooled-up, optimised 15th level character? A 10th level one? How much does the items, feat selection and the like affect the challenge rating?
You do understand that you're playing very far outside the base assumptions of the game? Math alone is not the answer.
MAJT69 wrote: Fair comment, but a cloud giant is what, 20 foot tall and 5000lbs? I think even Conan might think twice about attacking one, let alone two.
Of course, that assumes the PC sees it as 20 feet tall and 5000lbs and not a level-appropriate set of stats to fight, but that was kind of what I was hoping to aim at - that someone might think to sneak around, bargain with or trick something like that.
But yes, point taken at having to look at the numbers for saves and things.
The cloud giant is an example(this specific thing happened in a 'low magic' game I played in which is why I thought of it. But every brutish thing in the bestiary will do the same thing as you go up in level.
If you want giants to always be scary and threatening, thats cool, but that means you need to halt player level progression (See the rules for Epic 6 or E6/E8). That is a system specifically designed to implement that in something like pathfinder. And it doesn't give false impressions about what characters ought to be capable of.
>And it doesn't give false impressions about what characters ought to be capable of.
Yes, but in previous editions it was perfectly possible to play a no-magic world or character. Conan or the Grey Mouser could still be high level, they just didn't have armfuls of gear like a videogame character.
A 20th level fighter, say, is still pretty decent in battle, even without the +5 sword, ring, armour, cloak and everything the game assumes he'll have.
If anything, the standard load-out is what gives 'false impressions' surely, because all foes such a character faces will have their stats artificially inflated to balance these +5 items out. Earlier editions didn't assume gear, and thus ettins or giants or whatever weren't as drastically different from orcs or ogres.
I see your point, and it may just be that you can't do that kind of thing in 3.5, unless you rewrite every combat encounter, which is obviously a lot of work.
The End Boss doesn't have to have the exact stats in the printed module, he just needs to be a suitable challenge for whatever Pcs he's facing. Which is probably best done in a nother game, maybe.
MAJT69 wrote: >And it doesn't give false impressions about what characters ought to be capable of.
Yes, but in previous editions it was perfectly possible to play a no-magic world or character. Conan or the Grey Mouser could still be high level, they just didn't have armfuls of gear like a videogame character.
A 20th level fighter, say, is still pretty decent in battle, even without the +5 sword, ring, armour, cloak and everything the game assumes he'll have.
If anything, the standard load-out is what gives 'false impressions' surely, because all foes such a character faces will have their stats artificially inflated to balance these +5 items out. Earlier editions didn't assume gear, and thus ettins or giants or whatever weren't as drastically different from orcs or ogres.
I see your point, and it may just be that you can't do that kind of thing in 3.5, unless you rewrite every combat encounter, which is obviously a lot of work.
The End Boss doesn't have to have the exact stats in the printed module, he just needs to be a suitable challenge for whatever Pcs he's facing. Which is probably best done in a nother game, maybe.
Didn't assume gear, perhaps, but even if you don't assume a particular level of gear, whatever you have still affected how touch the fight was. In AD&D you had monsters immune to non-magical weapons of various bonuses. Fighting those gets much harder if you don't have them.
It's just that there were no guidelines for what you should have. Characters might just as well have been massively overequipped as not equipped at all. Monty Haul was a thing.
Also, without magical gear, things tend to shift even more in favor of casters - buffs can replace some gear, save boosters aren't available, etc. There's a drop in power for all classes, but it's not even.
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There is literally no answer I can give here except "not CR 20 or higher".
Level 20 Wizard with a spell book? Pretty close to CR 20s, regardless of what you face. Cleric even more so (the armor and self-buffing really help). Oracle, witch, summoner, and sorcerer fall under this as well. Ditto Druid, plus it comes with its own meat shield.
Level 20 Fighter with a bow? Probably in the 10s.
Level 20 Fighter without a bow (and yes, it exists, the NPC in the Rival Guide)? CR 5? I mean, anything with flying will completely negate them. Against stuff that wants to fight them on the ground they're fine, against anything that can kite with ranged attacks they die. Maybe that one guy is just really poorly built. Either way there's a huge jump in the CRs they can fight just by buying a ranged weapon.
Now let us work our way back to wizard. Barbarian probably stays at about CR 20 (flight from Elemental Blood, saves from Superstition, Spell Sunder, etc.), Monk (especially Qinggong) might get enough magic to scrape up to CR 10s and will have the nicest mundane defenses... but without magical bonuses (and no ability to use dex to damage) they will always have to trade offense for defense. And Chained Rogue is just boned, so very boned. No bonus to hit, much worse defenses and HP. Ranged attacks help but without magic items (Sniper Goggles) they're pretty dangerous still. CR 3 maybe? Cavalier it all depends on the order and mount, if they can fly they're probably good for CR 10-15 or so.
Paladin and Ranger can probably get to CR 15, any further and they risk 9th level spells. The paladin will have great saves, self-healing, and a damage spike when it matters. The ranger will have a meat shield, the ability to ignore onerous prereqs (on TWF for instance), and some spare buffing spells (and most importantly, the ability to heal themself without UMD).
Magus, Warpriest, and Hunter probably can face somewhere between CR 13 and CR 17.
Bard is literally impossible to classify (way too many archetypes), the classic buff bard probably adds one or two to the CR the rest of the party can take (provided they could actually take them before, fighting twin lower CR creatures for example).
You know what, after doing all of this I guess I do have an answer. 9th level spells can take on CR 20 (summoner has 9th level spells) because gear is not very necessary for them, 6th level spells can take on about CR 15 (usually slightly more gear dependent), and martials can take on CR 5s to start and you add +5 to the CRs they can probably take for spells or significant magical abilities, good saves (and I don't mean the monk's all good saves, I mean Paladin/Barbarian good saves), and flight or ranged attacks. Then subtract a couple CR if they're melee combatants with a 3/4 BAB or d8 hit dice.
That's helpful Bob, thanks.
The new unchained book has some rules for removing magic items from play and replacing them with a set of static bonuses as players level. This allows you to run a low magic item game without drastically messing up with the base assumptions of the system.
Alternatively if you are looking for a gritty, low-fantasy feel, pathfinder is not the right system. At the very most, pathfinder can achieve a semblance of this feel via E6 - trying to fit 20th level PCs into a low fantasy game is a square peg and round hole. I would try a different system in that case.
thejeff wrote: Didn't assume gear, perhaps, but even if you don't assume a particular level of gear, whatever you have still affected how touch the fight was. In AD&D you had monsters immune to non-magical weapons of various bonuses. Fighting those gets much harder if you don't have them.
It's just that there were no guidelines for what you should have. Characters might just as well have been massively overequipped as not equipped at all. Monty Haul was a thing.
Also, without magical gear, things tend to shift even more in favor of casters - buffs can replace some gear, save boosters aren't available, etc. There's a drop in power for all classes, but it's not even.
Indeed. In fact if you spend any time looking through the various modules for Basic, 1e and 2e they are chock full of magical items.
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MAJT69 wrote:
A question from a purely mathematical point of view: what would be the right level of encounters for – say – a 20th level fighter with no magic items? I read a thread recently about a PC being surprised while bathing and how long he would last.
Let’s say he (and his party) has standard non-magical weapons, maybe standard non-magical armour, decent stats but not maxed out, broad feats rather than total mastery of one weapon. Is he the equivalent of a tooled-up, optimised 15th level character? A 10th level one? How much does the items, feat selection and the like affect the challenge rating?
Honestly I'd never send that fighter up against any encounter with individual CRs higher than CR 10 and even that might be pushing it. His saving throws are going to be horrible, his armor class is going to be horrible, and his mobility options are going to be horrible. His offense is going to be horrible as well because you're basically sitting at whatever his base stats were plus 5 points dropped into his ability scores somewhere, and since you commented that he he lacks total mastery of a weapon, I presume that he's no deeper than weapon specialization for any weapon, which means at best he has maybe 1d8+10 (+4 Str, +4 weapon training, +2 speciaization).
Without the magic goodies, his HP is going to be low too. He's only got 114 HP before Con mods. Since he can be hit so easily by weapons and magic, it's trivially easy to run through his HP in short order.
Power Attack and Deadly Aim could help against low-CR creatures by converting excess to-hit from a high BAB into more damage to punch through stuff like DR, but it will quickly run out of steam against enemies of middling CR as the -6 penalty to hit will start to cause your iterative attacks to miss every time.
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Blakmane wrote: The new unchained book has some rules for removing magic items from play and replacing them with a set of static bonuses as players level. This allows you to run a low magic item game without drastically messing up with the base assumptions of the system. I've looked over the system in question, and I think it will serve reasonably well for your needs. :)
Thank you Kalindlara, I will definitely look into that.
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